Archive for November, 2007

If you are a small business in Canada and are already using the “Quick Method” of accounting for your GST remittances, then stop here. You’re smarter than I was.

Sometimes one stumbles upon a quarter on the sidewalk. Today, was kind of like that. While browsing for a CRA payroll form, I ended up meandering to the information page about the “Quick Method” option for GST. I’ve noticed the term on the GST forms… and now I wish I had researched it earlier.

In short, if your business qualifies for the Quick Method, you don’t need to remit your GST collected less GST paid. Instead, after registering, you can remit an 3.6% as laid out in this table for 2008 (when GST goes to 5%). You get to pocket the difference. As a bonus, you skip out on a lot of annoying things like adding up all those ITCs, and calculating ITCs for stuff bought from the US and other non-Canadian sources.

If you’re a low overhead operation, you’re probably going to save a few bucks. Look into it. You do have to pre-register… so, with the new calendar year around the corner, it’s a pretty good time to consider it.

The catalyst for the starting of the Perceptus blog was to give me a logical place to post about a series of code updates to print-bingo.com that are just around the corner.

It’s been about 2/3 of a year since any major changes have happened to the site, so a few items have made the to-do list.

The first change was a relatively simple one that I expected to need to do a long time ago. User-resettable passwords! Surprisingly, I’ve only received about half a dozen requests for password resets over the last year or two that print-bingo.com has existed. This is out of a few hundred registered users to the site.

Apparently, people do not tend to forget their passwords. Or maybe they use really simple passwords to less-important things like their favorite bingo card printing website. Or maybe I’ve got a lot of bank PIN’s or phone numbers being used as passwords. Who knows. I can’t explain it. I know that in my past technical support roles, I have had to reset a much higher percentage of passwords for Windows network logins, especially after vacations.

BTW, no, I never store the plain text passwords, only hashes. Please harass any of your favorite software vendors that still store plain text passwords anywhere.

So, what is blog.perceptus.ca? It is intended to become a place where little tid-bits of information about Perceptus’ cool stuff get posted. New features to our websites, the rationale behind some of our operations, etc.

It will also cover various topics that super-small companies (i.e. the more-or-less one man show) face in Canada. Things like taxes, currencies, and international shipping have and will continue to cause frustration to me, Leonard Chan, and my company, Perceptus Solutions Inc. of Vancouver, Canada.

Where is the line between ranting and informative blogging? I’m not sure, but I think we’ll find out soon.